Pickering dungeon builder Robert White explains his motivations

confinement room2

Sentencing for Robert Edwin White, who built a confinement room in an abandoned house in Pickering. White admitted planning to kidnap a woman who had been supporting his ex-wife.

Confinement room

Court Photo

Sentencing for Robert Edwin White, who built a confinement room in an abandoned house in Pickering. White admitted planning to kidnap a woman who had been supporting his ex-wife.

Robert Edwin White

A feature on Robert White, the man who built a confinement room in an abandoned Pickering farmhouse.

Locking arms

Yvonne Berg/Yvonne Berg

September 10, 2012 - Patricia Gallagher (right) and her friend Gwen Armstrong (left) lock arms as they walk away from the Oshawa courthouse after the sentencing for Gallagher's ex-husband, Robert White, was adjourned until October 4th. White was found guilty of break and enter after he broke into a Pickering farmhouse and constructed a confinement room where he intended to hold Ms. Armstrong.

Carol and Jim White

Yvonne Berg/Yvonne Berg

Carol and Jim White walk away from the Oshawa courthouse after the sentencing for their son, Robert White, was adjourned until October 4th. White was found guilty of break and enter after he broke into a Pickering farmhouse and constructed a confinement room where he intended to hold a friend of his ex-wife.

Gwen Armstrong knows there is a man out there who once built her a dungeon.

She lives with the knowledge that he spent years deliberating over his plans. She has seen photographic evidence of the confinement room, depicting metal chains and plastic jugs with enough water to last for weeks. She knows there would have been no escape.

For now, Armstrong can find comfort in the fact that Robert Edwin White — the ex-husband of her friend Patricia Gallagher — was caught before anything could have happened. Today, her would-be jailer is the one confined to a prison cell.

What Armstrong does not know, however, is how long he will remain there.

Earlier this month, White pleaded guilty to breaking and entering an abandoned Pickering farmhouse, where a makeshift dungeon was discovered in the basement. A second charge of attempted kidnapping was withdrawn as a result of his plea.

The 45-year-old now awaits his sentencing on Thursday in an Oshawa courtroom. He could receive the maximum provincial sentence of two years minus a day, which the Crown is seeking — or White could walk away from the courthouse a free man. His lawyer has asked for a sentence of seven to nine months; White has already served eight in pre-trial custody.

In their victim impact statements, Armstrong and Gallagher say they live in fear. Gallagher recalled weeping with relief when her ex-husband was denied bail.

On a recent September morning, White said he understands why people fear him now. But he insists his time in jail has changed him.

“I am a different man now,” said White, dressed in a bright-orange jumpsuit issued by the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay. His gaze — directed at a Star reporter through reinforced glass and underlined by a crescent-shaped bruise below his right eye — is steady and firm.

“I realize now that I have issues I need to deal with.”

In an exclusive 30-minute interview, White said he has finally learned, with devastating clarity, about the man he used to be. And that former self — a bitter soul driven by a misplaced anger and suppressed pain — is gone, he insisted.

Much of his bitterness came from the ruins of his marriage, he said. He once tried to build a family. When that crumbled, he began to build a dungeon.

•••

It is difficult to reconcile the many sides of Robert White. He is a devout Mormon who has admitted to soliciting prostitutes. His parents describe him as a loving father but the courts have found reason to deny him custody of his two children. He claims to have been a loving and caring husband; his ex-wife, however, accuses him of being an abuser.

White — a balding man with narrow shoulders and a hangdog posture — describes himself as a coward.

“I have had low self-esteem my whole life. I have been a coward my whole life,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. “I have taken my pain and buried it here” — he gestures at his heart — “and it has turned into bitterness.”

White was born in the Parry Sound area and moved to Toronto in 1995, where he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Armstrong and Gallagher were also congregants at the church. Neither of them responded to requests for an interview.

According to White, it was Armstrong who introduced him to the mother of his two children in 1996. The couple married in a hasty ceremony one year later in Scotland, Gallagher’s home country.

They bought a house in Scarborough and White worked as a general contractor, with a specialty in recording studios. Until 2007, Gallagher worked night shifts at a shelter.

In 1998, the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter. A son was born two years later. According to White, Armstrong was present in the delivery room for both children’s births.

“Do you have children?” he asked the Star reporter. “If you do, you and your husband better make sure there isn’t a third person in that delivery room.”

White said Gallagher spends all of her free time with Armstrong. When she wasn’t working, Gallagher would often bring the children to Armstrong’s house, which she shares with her husband Doug.

Meanwhile, his own marriage was filled with “an awful lot of strife.” White said he could not understand why Gallagher did not return his love when he cared and provided for her.

In her victim impact statement, Gallagher referred to living in an “abusive situation” with White. She filed for divorce on April 1, 2008.

In her divorce application, Gallagher claimed White had an “anger management problem” and raised questions about his parenting. A Children’s Aid Society worker investigated the family at one point and found there was “inappropriate physical discipline in the home,” according to an affidavit filed by the Office of the Children’s Lawyer.

In documents filed with the court, White has admitted to raising his voice at the children and using the occasional physical punishment, such as “rapping his daughter’s knuckles with the side of a butter knife.” He also said he enrolled in a “Being a Dad” program after the Children’s Aid Society became involved with his family.

But he denied abusing his children and cast doubt on Gallagher’s credibility by invoking her mental health issues and memory problems stemming from a brain injury. (The Children’s Aid Society worker told the Office of the Children’s Lawyer that she had no concerns with Gallagher’s parenting or mental health.)

White also tried to explain the “dissatisfaction and frustration” that has built up over the years. “The Respondent (White) believes he has done much to yield to (Gallagher’s) requests many times, but does feel exceptionally unappreciated,” he wrote in his response claim.

Both Gallagher and White sought sole custody of their children, painting the other as being an unfit parent. But the Children’s Aid Society and Office of the Children’s Lawyer supported Gallagher’s claim and White has since had limited access to his children — and, initially, only with mandatory supervision.

Their fight in family court dragged on for four years, amassing enough legal documentation to fill a banker’s box. The papers tell the tale of a family’s destruction — and Armstrong appears throughout as a supporting character.

When Gallagher moved out, she brought her kids to the Armstrongs’ house to live. Armstrong helped feed and care for the children, who began to think of her as an aunt. In 2009, the Armstrongs took Gallagher and the kids to Disney World, according to an affidavit White filed with the court.

White’s resentment of Armstrong can be felt in the very first document he filed with the court. Armstrong has been helpful with the children, he wrote, “however this situation has become somewhat problematic in that the parenting lines have become blurred with Gwen’s excessive involvement.”

And White had a theory behind the Armstrongs’ intentions, according to a clinical investigator with the Office of the Children’s Lawyer.

“(White) says that the Armstrongs are trying to take his children, and are using Ms. Gallagher as a proxy to allow them to do so,” clinical investigator Tracy Griffiths wrote in an affidavit.

Tensions only intensified when the Armstrongs were approved as supervisors for White’s visits with his children. During one dinner visit between White and his son, the adults got into a heated argument in a shopping mall, according to Griffith’s affidavit.

The boy said he needed to use the washroom but Armstrong’s husband insisted on accompanying him and his father in a supervisory role.

“Mr. White advised the Armstrongs they were kidnapping his son,” Griffiths wrote. “Ms. Armstrong advised Mr. White he had assaulted her by removing her hand from (the son’s) arm.”

Eventually, White had to pay an outside agency to supervise his visits with the children. But his wife cancelled several visits and between January 2009 and February 2010, she denied White nearly 80 hours of access time with the kids, according to court documents filed by White.

Sometime in 2008, White told his father about a plan: he was going to build a confinement room and he was going to put Armstrong in it. Three years later, White repeated these intentions to his second wife — but this time claimed he wanted to seek a ransom from Armstrong’s husband.

At White’s sentencing hearing, the Crown attorney made reference to a 15-page psychiatric report, which has been sealed to the public by a court order. The report, he said, revealed White’s tendency to “generate enormous strategies” when confronted with a problem.

In this case, his problem was the breakdown of his family. The source of the problem, he believed, was Gwen Armstrong. And, somehow, his enormous strategizing brought him to an underground room in a derelict farmhouse.

•••

On Nov. 29, 2011, Durham Regional Police received a “well-being” call at Pickering. A prison cell had been found in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse on federally owned land.

Shrouded by a thicket of mature trees, the farmhouse on Concession Road 7 was the ideal setting for a nefarious plot; it was set far back from the road and the overgrown laneway was barricaded by concrete blocks.

When Const. Richard Robinson arrived at the scene, he found only one entrance, through a large, wooden door in the attached barn.

Inside, another wooden door led to a cement staircase that snaked under the main building. At the bottom was another door; behind that door yet another one.

This last door had no knobs and was built from layers of plywood, about as thick as an Oxford dictionary. Inside was the confinement room, newly tiled and still smelling of fresh paint.

As Crown attorney David Slessor would later tell the court: “Once it’s bolted from the outside, there would be no getting out from the inside through that door without somehow breaking it down.”

Investigators found several tools inside the room, along with a blue World Youth Day T-shirt. There were also two President’s Choice soy milk containers, both with recent expiry dates.

Det. Const. Malcolm Wilson with Durham Regional Police was appointed as the lead investigator. The case, he said in an interview, is the strangest one of his career.

“It’s a difficult case because of the questions,” he said. “Obviously initially, the intentions were a little bit unknown.”

Wilson said the big break came when investigators contacted the office of the commissionaire, which is responsible for securing the area. They unearthed two reports documenting White’s presence near the farmhouse.

The first was an evening in August 2010, when White’s 1980s grey Mercedes-Benz was seen parked nearby. The second was from Nov. 2, 2011, when Commissionaire Nick Haggerty spotted a man at around 2:45 p.m., carrying a white painter’s coat and walking by some nearby railway tracks.

A Mercedes-Benz was parked nearby so Haggerty decided to wait beside it. He noticed paint supplies inside and jotted down the licence plate number. About 15 minutes later, the man approached.

“Mr. Haggerty asked the male why did he walk through the woods and the farmers field,” according to the agreed statement of facts. “The male replied, ‘He was out for a walk.’”

The man told Haggerty he owned the car. When police later searched the license plate number, it came back as belonging to a Robert E. White who lived on Addison Street in Oshawa.

On Dec. 23, police officers surreptitiously searched the recycling bins outside White's home, looking for DNA and fingerprints. They also found several cartons of President’s Choice soy milk.

Police tracked down Gallagher, who confirmed that White drank a lactose-free milk product and once volunteered at World Youth Day.

Gallagher — who described White to police as a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” — also revealed that her ex-husband had a habit of marking his tools with a dot of red paint. Investigators brought her the tools seized from the confinement room — red paint marks.

Police arrested White on Feb. 13. By that point, however, the farmhouse had been burnt down in a suspicious fire. An investigation into the fire is still ongoing, Wilson said.

According to the agreed statement of facts, White told police he never intended to kill anyone — he just wanted to confine someone before letting them go. The dungeon was not for his wife, ex-wife, children or the “prostitutes that he had solicited,” White insisted. But he would not reveal who his intended victim was.

Police eventually determined that White’s target was, in fact, Armstrong, according to the agreed facts. Wilson declined to divulge how police determined this.

At White’s Sept. 10 sentencing hearing in an Oshawa courthouse, Ontario Court Justice Mary Teresa Devlin asked him if he would like to make a statement. He stood and spoke for 19 minutes.

In a meandering and often emotional speech, White apologized for committing a crime, detailed his troubled marriage, atoned for hurting his children and parents, and acknowledged the “emotional carnage” his actions had wrought.

He explained that he blamed Armstrong for the demise of his marriage and realizes now this was an “incorrect conclusion.” As for Gallagher, who he once considered an inferior parent and wife, she is actually a “fine human being,” he said.

“Unfortunately in my pride and blindness, I failed to see my own weaknesses and shortcomings,” he said. “All I could see were hers.”

But White hinted at lingering feelings of resentment — “Is there any worse crime than the destruction of a family?” he cried at one point — and offered not an apology but his forgiveness to the two women he had victimized.

White’s parents Jim and Carol, a polite, mild-mannered couple, have faithfully taken the three-hour drive from the Parry Sound area to Oshawa for their son’s court appearances. Both seem sadly bewildered by the turn his life has taken.

They are hesitant to speak with reporters. But they cannot help coming to their son’s defenced.

“This is completely out of character,” Carol White said quietly. “He’s a good man. Rob is an honest, religious, helpful person.”

She said she has had plenty of time to reflect on her son’s actions. She believes he became desperate, but declined to say why.

When Armstrong and Gallagher walk past her in the courthouse corridor, however, White suddenly stops talking and follows their movements with her eyes.

“I can understand why he did it,” she said slowly, before trailing off. “Life is so strange. You just don’t know.”

•••

In the end, the confinement room never fulfilled its dark destiny. But this was not a victimless crime, said Crown attorney David Slessor in court.

In her victim impact statement, Gallagher wept as she described losing her sense of safety. Her children have become sad and withdrawn and the entire family is now in therapy.

She feels guilt over exposing her friend to potential harm. As for Armstrong, she now has trouble sleeping and is haunted by images of that confinement room.

“Mrs. Armstrong will no doubt live forever knowing that room was built for her,” Slessor told the court. “It will always be: what if?”

That question will never have an answer. But when asked directly as to whether he would have gone through with his plan, White does not hesitate with his response.

“No, I wouldn’t have,” he insisted. “Because I was a coward.”

Working on the room gave him an outlet, he said. “On some level it was like therapy.”

White claims he cannot remember how, or when, he arrived at his idea to build a confinement room. He stumbled upon the farmhouse, about a 45-minute drive from his Oshawa home, one day while on one of his “long country drives.”

By that point, White was already with his second wife. They married in March 2011 and moved into a modest Oshawa bungalow soon after.

The couple has now separated. In January, White’s wife filed for a restraining order shortly after police executed a search warrant at their home, claiming she feared her husband, who was emotionally and verbally abusive.

White expressed disgust with the sensational, tabloid proportions his story has taken on in the media. He complained about reporters using the phrase “torture room” in reference to the confinement room and insisted that the chains bolted to the ceiling were not for torture, but for keeping food off the ground.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be a celebrity in here,” he said. “You should hear the names they call me.”

White claimed that by building a confinement room for Armstrong he thought he was removing his children “from an imprisonment situation.” When the conversation turned to his kids, White buried his face in his hands and dissolved into tears.

“My God, what have I done to them?” he cried, raising a clenched fist to his forehead. “My children are precious to me.”

But what exactly did White hope to achieve? To this question, he simply shrugs.

“Retention,” he said. By removing Armstrong from the picture, he continued, “I thought Pat’s house of cards would fall apart.”

At White’s sentencing hearing, Slessor argued that the strictest possible punishment is necessary to send a message that such actions will not be tolerated. Yes, he said, White is not being sentenced for an attempted kidnapping, but that is what he planned to do.

“It was built for a very sinister purpose,” Slessor said. “It was built to confine Ms. Armstrong. And that could only be done if she was abducted.”

But White’s lawyer, Paul Affleck, argued it would be unjustifiable to punish his client for something that never happened.

Det. Const. Malcolm Wilson would not say whether police found any hard evidence to show that White would have gone through with the kidnapping.

But what Wilson can say is that he is glad to have caught White when he did.

“It’s one of the most fascinating cases I’ve ever worked because usually in our job we pick up the pieces after the crime’s been committed,” Wilson said. “This is one of those rare occasions where we were able to prevent the worst part of the crime from happening.

“Fortunately, we’ll never really know what was going to happen in that room.”